Solar
Power
Incident
Ray
Aligning
Lens
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Space Support Vehicle
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A category of spacecraft for the purpose of beaming solar power with minimal loss. Applications: propel solar sails or provide supplemental solar power to distant probes, asteroid mining, or other interplanetary spacecraft. This type of spacecraft would be put in a solar orbit between Venus and Mercury and direct sunlight as needed. A reflective film unfurls from spools within drums on the body of the craft and is attached to supporting masts which are used to keep the film in alignment. This acts as a simplified Fresnel collector that produces a convergent zone of redirected sunlight.
This model is a bit of a rough draft at the moment so it’s not all that detailed and may be missing some components. However it should give an idea of general appearance, and also make clear how feasible it should be deploy while using existing materials at a relatively low cost vs. other types of beamed energy systems.
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